Jan's Restaurant is closing. It's over on Beverly Boulevard a block east of La Cienega here in Los Angeles but it won't be there a week from now. Some time after it closes, the building will be torn down and a new Chipotle Restaurant will be erected, fulfilling a vital need. My God, how can we have three square blocks of this city without a Chipotle? Next thing you know, they'll be opening them inside Starbucks.
I used to live a block from Jan's and I ate there once or twice a week. Once I stopped living a block from Jan's, I still ate there, only once or twice a month. Sorry, Chipotle. I've seen your menu and you won't be getting a dime of business outta me.
Jan's advertised themselves as "L.A.'s Best Coffee Shop," which I only took to mean that the two other coffee shops owned by the same guy weren't as good. Compared to coffee shops that had other owners, it didn't stack up badly. Jan's served great breakfasts, great hamburgers, decent homemade soups and, best of all, they had one of those vertical pie cases up front near the register so if you had to wait for a table, you could stand there and watch pies revolve.
One time, I took a lady friend there and she ordered eggs and sausage. The menu said "Any style" and she told our server she wanted them — and I quote — "basted in water." Our server said, "I'll check and see if the chef knows how to do that." She went off and came back and told us the chef didn't know how to do that.
My friend was shocked. "How," she asked me and the gods, "can a professional chef not know how to make eggs basted in water?" She went over to where he worked and tried to explain it to him. You start like you're going to fry the egg sunny-side-up and then you drizzle a tablespoon of water on it, cover the pan and let it cook for 2-3 minutes, creating an egg that's sort of poached and sort of fried.
The chef listened politely to her lesson and then said, sounding way too much like Peter Falk for his own good, "Hey, lady, I'm sure with the right cook, it would be a work of art. But I'm only cooking here because I'm not classy enough to eat here. And no matter how I cook an egg, it comes out scrambled. Life's like that sometime."
She returned to our table and ordered her eggs scrambled…and sure enough, they came out scrambled. The man did not lie.
I'm going to miss Jan's. There was nothing remarkable about it but for its general dependability. Still, it served me well and fed me well and I spent some great hours there talking with friends after the ultra-efficient bus boys had cleared the dishes away. You can do that at any restaurant, I suppose, but I liked to do it at Jan's. Life's like that sometime. And what the hell am I doing up at this hour?